


To Lose Them All

by LordJixis



Category: Akatsuki no Yona | Yona of the Dawn
Genre: Badass!Yona, Doesn't quite work, F/M, Hak tries to leave Yona at the wind tribe
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-07
Updated: 2017-07-07
Packaged: 2018-11-29 04:14:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,694
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11432931
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LordJixis/pseuds/LordJixis
Summary: Yona would never have stayed, but Hak tried anyway.Without him, she must start from scratch, but maybe it's just what she needed.





	To Lose Them All

Yona was... well, she was heart broken, honestly. It was distinctly unpleasant and and vaguely unfamiliar, in the sense that she'd never really been outright _rejected_. She was a princess, after all. But Hak's back was getting farther and farther from her, and there wasn't really much she could do about it. He was stronger, and faster, and might even be stubborner.

So she watched as her last important person walked away.

It was a turning point, but for what, she didn't exactly know.

* * *

 

Mundok was loyal, in the most determined and pure sense of loyalty. She knew, really, that it was smarter to keep her in the Wind Tribe, but once she expressed her wishes, he sighed loudly and gave in. Just like that. It shouldn't be refreshing, (She was a princess. Things _were_ easy.) but it was, and she felt some of the tension leave her shoulders. People were on her side. She could do this.

He couldn't come with her, a reality expressed in such a heartbroken voice she couldn't help but feel bad for him. But he assigns two people to escort her, and it is more than she would've asked for. They were certainly wind tribe warriors, laid back and smiling, and she fell into something like an easy banter with them. They would leave in the morning and escort her to Ik-soo, and then she would be on her own.

She didn't spend too much time thinking about the last part, not least because she'd never really been alone before. The night passed with warm tea and fitful sleep.

And then they were off.

* * *

 

She'd been given clothes she could hike in. The fabric was different from anything she'd worn before, rougher and heavier, pressing against her skin in a kind of comforting weight. She'd never really thought about it, but her clothes at the castle had almost floated around her, light and smooth. Now she was wearing the same material as her guards, and while she supposed it was unbecoming of a princess and lacked the ethereal quality that her garb at the palace had held, she quite liked being on the same level as those around her.

That thought helped as she chattered along with the laid-back warriors, treating them as equals despite protests. The blond one smiled and laughed when she stumbled, her face flushing, but the dark haired one curled his lip in concern and said, “No one's ever taught you, have they?”

And, well. She could play a lute reasonably well and knew how to carry a tune on most other instruments, and she could sing and dance and read and write, but... No, no one had ever taught her the more important things, like say, surviving. She supposed that was no one's fault, because no one had really thought she'd be out on her own, but it happened anyway and now it was time to make up for all the lost days. “Can you?” She asks instead of answering, because she is sure he already knows he is right.

It's a four day trip, and through it, she learns how to shoot a bow proficiently enough to feed herself (provided she was quite sneaky and could get within ten or so feet of the animal.) She learns to skin a rabbit and a squirrel, both of which splash blood onto clothes she knows will not be clean again. She learns how to hold a dagger and about throwing her minimal weight around to it's maximum effect, and she learns how to play dirty, in ways she fears she'll have to use.

And then, they're escorting her into a clearing with a shack in it, and it is time to say goodbye. She doesn't cry until they leave, and counts it as a win.

* * *

 

Yoon doesn't like her, but Ik-soo does. She asks for help frequently, because god knows she needs it, and she tries not to be embarrassed as Yoon teaches her how to sew and cook things other than roasted meat. She learns what is edible and what is poisonous, and tucks both of these fact away for later. Poison would be just as important as food, she feared.

She must leave, eventually. She is not a dragon, not a descendant of king Hiryuu, none of these things that Ik-soo believes with such fervor, but she is certain that she must find the dragons because if there is one thing he is right about, it's that she can't do this alone.

He tells her to take Yoon, and in the same moment her heart screams for the company, her brain tells her that she cannot. It's a suicide mission, in reality, and she couldn't tear apart a family just to force one of them to die with her.

She tells him she will leave in the morning, alone. And she thanks him.

And that is that.

 

* * *

 

They're both ready to see her off, and then they start walking with her. She finds they don't listen when she tells them to turn around, and since she is so used to people listening, her protests stop there. It is the opposite of Hak, and thinking about him makes her clench her fists tight and so she doesn't.

She protests, occasionally, but they are good company and knowledgeable and in reality she doesn't actually want them to leave. Now, she learns about staying hidden and covering her tracks. She is on her own as far as combat practice, because neither of them are much for fighting, but she has the basics to train with, and when Ik-Soo says they are getting close, her arms are started to show the first signs of sinewy muscle. She carries a dagger gifted to her by the blond wind tribe warrior and a bow gifted to her by the black haired one, and she is in no way ready to fight but she will, if she has to.

The mist is thick and foreboding, and when the voices command them to surrender, she does. They're grab and dragged and she is treated just about the worst she has been her whole life, and when her hood falls off, all the white haired, pale skinned people stare.

And then they apologize.

It's the strangest thing.

She thinks they've realized she's the princess, but they are cut off from the outside world completely and it doesn't make sense. And then there is a beautiful boy with a huge, scaled hand, and they are calling her the red dragon.

She is an impostor, but she holds this title tightly, because she can sense the power in that clawed hand and knows she will need it to take back the castle and avenge her father and create a Kouka as powerful and fair as ever.

He touches her and falls. She thinks he died, maybe the heavens struck him down in retaliation for her taking a title she wasn't deserving of, but he has icy blue eyes and they open and stare at hers with such intensity it numbs her.

“I am here to serve you, great descendant of Hiryuu.” She thinks that maybe, she should come clean. She doesn't, of course. Lying is not becoming of a princess, but as the long days have passed with her climbing through treacherous terrain, training her body to be something capable of surviving, she has felt less and less like a princess and more and more like something harder, fiercer.

The people of the white dragon are not like Yoon and Ik-Soo. They are fighters, through and through, and she has so much to learn that she stays with them for almost an entire month. There's much she must do, and every day spent training with them is another day she is not spending finding the rest of the dragons, another day that Soo-Won spends on the throne.

But she resolutely doesn't think about that, and it isn't even all that hard. She trains from dawn until dusk, and when she sleeps it is steeped in so much exhaustion she doesn't dream. Her food is protein rich and nothing like the diet of fruit, milk, and honey she subsisted off of at the castle. Her body changes, slowly and steadily, but she is hard where she used to be soft when they leave. 

He fits in well, even though he reminds her of who she used to be. Bugs scare him, and she realizes that they used to scare her too, but now nothing scares her more than losing those she cares about, and that has already happened so thoroughly she might even have the audacity to call herself fearless.

This is put to the test by bandits. The white dragon is fierce in combat, and when he tells them to get back, she is the only one who doesn't listen. Yoon and Ik-Soo are not fighters, and she doesn't want them to be, but Kija is only one man, for all that he is more. So she stands tall and strong and knows they will underestimate her, and the first time she kills someone it is a man twice her size with a dagger sliced through his eye. She never could've taken him alive and she never could've wrestled him into submission, but his blue eyes had been wide open and so, so easy.

She feels bad, in a vague and disassociated way, but two others fall to her hand in the same brutal, efficient way; and when she turns around and everyone is safe it banishes that thought to a small dark part of her brain (She chooses, quite consciously, to not notice how that part was steadily growing.).

It is something quite new, to kill to protect, but she finds that these people, the ones she has laughed and ate with for weeks now, are worth whatever sacrifices she has to make.

Kija didn't flinch as he tore down lives, and she wondered if he had killed before. That night, he wakes them all up with screaming about a centipede.

People are complicated, she muses. She wonders if she is, too.

 

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> I haven't read this manga in at least a year so if stuffs wrong thats why. This is from a tumblr prompt and I am delirious at the point of writing it so if it doesn't make sense, that's why.


End file.
